Podcast Of The Week: Julie Fredrickson on Infinite Loops

Julie Fredrickson at Chaotic Capital has this thing about how adaptability is more important than predictions. I’ve been following along with/reading her stuff for a few years now, but that idea and how it shows up everywhere is so powerful. 

When James O’Shaughnessy practically leads off the conversation with the question (well, after comparing hippies and tech investors) I knew we were in for a good talk. 

A few other notes:

Tech and magic are just separated by layers of abstraction. 

The weirdening is everywhere, and maybe because everyone’s hero’s journeys (and Jungian midlife crisis I’ll add) are colliding without restriction. 

Why she likes finding founders who have had “WTF moments” in their lives. 

How the market is (or can be) your muse. 

And how she wanted to work at Vogue growing up, but why she changed her mind (I’ll probably write a seperate post about this). 

Check out the full podcast below, and if you never encountered Julie and her writing – here’s a snippet from Chaotic Capital’s website (not investment advice, duh), and a link to one of my favorite recent posts, Day 1007 and Half a Decade Past Premium Mediocre. 

The world is getting more complicated. Chaos and complexity present both an opportunity and a threat.

But it’s a mistake to try and control complex systems, when humans aren’t that good at predicting second, third, or even fourth-order effects. Rather we need to learn how to adapt.

With chaotic.capital we’re identifying, investing in, and supporting companies that adapt our lives and systems to the opportunities that chaos brings.